AF447

[Brian Abraham]

From AVweb today

Air France Speeds Airbus Pitot Replacements After Pilots Complain

Air France has accelerated its effort to replace pitot tubes on its Airbus aircraft after members of one pilots union threatened to refuse to fly the unmodified airplanes, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. The airline had said over the weekend it would replace the sensors on all Airbus A330 and A340 airplanes over the next few weeks. But on Monday, Alter, a union representing about 12 percent of Air France pilots, posted a notice on its Web site urging its members to "refuse any flight on an A330/A340 which has not had at least two pitot sensors modified," according to the Times. SNPL-ALPA, which represents the largest share of Air France pilots, made no such suggestion, but union spokesman Eric Derivry told the Associated Press: "What we know is that other planes that have experienced incorrect airspeed indications have had the same pitots. And planes with the new pitot tubes have never had such problems."

A U.S. Navy ship and the French nuclear attack submarine Emeraude are both en route to the crash site of Air France Flight 447 to aid the search for the cockpit voice and flight data recorders. The Navy also flew two devices called Towed Pinger Locators to Brazil on Monday. The five-foot-long devices can detect the signals from emergency beacons from as deep as 20,000 feet. They will be towed behind French tugboats. Crews so far have recovered 28 bodies from the crash site. They have been flown via Blackhawk helicopter to Fernando de Noronha, an island 400 miles off the coast of Brazil, and later will be taken to the mainland in a C-130. Identification by fingerprints and dental records is expected to take some time. A total of 228 people died in the crash. On Monday, the airplane's vertical stabilizer was recovered, the largest piece of the aircraft that has been found so far. The piece showed no evident signs of fire or explosion.

[Interflug]

The scenario nsxtasy illustrates is IMHO quite feasable. What would be interesting to find out, but probably impossible, is who was on the flight deck?
It was a heavy crew so it is likely that one crew member was in the bunk. Was it the Captain? Where is the crew bunk on a 330? If nsxtasy's scenario had to be sorted by the first officer and a relief pilot chances of success are reduced.

How much experience of hand flying the plane at altitude in alternate law in a stormy night without (reliable) instruments would the pilots of an A330 have
a) in simulator?
b) in real world?

I'm not questioning their ability. I'm questioning, if statistically it would make much difference who handled the plane. And one F/O had more experience on type than the captain.

AF press release Nr. 2: ...The flight captain had a record of 11,000 flight hours and had already flown 1,700 hours on Airbus A330/A340s.

Of the two first officers, one had flown 3,000 flight hours (800 of which on the Airbus A330/A340) and the other 6,600 (2,600 on the Airbus A330/A340).

[BOAC]

Originally Posted by nsxtasy

I believe this was in reference to the other plane crash

- thanks - on a re-read I (think) I can see that now.

[arrffaa]

computers

I couldn't agree more with DC-ATE post of 6th june.

More and more we, as Air traffic Controllers, are being sunbjected to the computer. Electronic flght progess strips, conflict alert when there isn't any, AMAN working out false and stupid EATs, computers telling us when to turn you on to the base and closing headings. Flashing that, coloured this, you can't do that, you MUST do this - all by a machine!

My brain works quicker than any computer when it comes to actually doing stuff. Let's keep computers simply for monitoring eh?

This is one of the saddest and most frightening accidents I have ever read about. I really hope that the FDR and CVR can be found. However, after the Concorde accident report, I also have MANY doubts as to the accuracy of the future BEA report, whether they are found or not.

[hawker750]

The point is that the Captain is more likely in his 11,000 hours of being caught in a monster before and to have reacted correctly. As has been said before 3 degrees works but you have to ignore height loss/gain. If the 2 F/O's had never experienced this terror before it makes it more difficult to envsage a sucessful outcome. I have been in the middle twice and as anyone who has experienced it, it is frightening, not only the violence but the noise. One really questions the integrity of the airframe

[etsd0001]

We do all understand the differences between ACMS, CFDS, CMS and ACARS don't we.

ACMS is system monitoring, not directly related to the CMS

CFDS is A320 speak for the CMS

CMS is A330/40 speak

[Graybeard]

Cap'n Crunch: "Yeah I know. You're probably right. But what's really stumping me, is: Can't a spiraling bus transmit a cabin decent (descent?) ADVISORY out on ACARS through HF? I mean ACARs doesn't know it's in deep doodo. Power should have been good. HF should have been good down to break up (VS fin loss) or dual flame out. Right?"

FWIW, The ACARS MU, Management Unit, is powered by 115 vac. I don't know which electrical bus on the A330, but it wouldn't be high priority.

I came to understand from prior posts that the ACARS was transmitting via the Satcom, and not HF. It would be tough for a spiraling plane to keep lock on a satellite, whereas the HF wouldn't much care. Why have both capabilities? Message cost on HF is lower.

GB

[SaturnV]

BOAC, the post mortem summary for bodies recovered from Air India 182 can be found starting on p. 19 of this report:

http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/prg/ns.../CASBai-en.pdf

The mapping of recovered bodies to assigned seats (recognizing that passengers may change seats once airborne) indicates that the further aft a passenger was seated, the higher the percentage of body recovery. No bodies were recovered from the most forward sections of the 747. Also, few of the Air India recovered bodies showed evidence of significant trauma from having seat belts fastened. (That's not likely to be the case of bodies recovered from AF 447.)

A similar mapping of trauma and seat location was done for the victims of TW 800.

[BOAC]

Hawker - you claim to have been "in the middle twice" - are you seriously suggesting that you or anyone would NOT be in the left seat in the ITCZ as it was? .......and, incidentally, it will be EXTREMELY easy to determine who was where if we ever get the cockpit section back. I my opinion this line of questioning is a complete distraction.

[Graybeard]

Further to post above regarding ACARS message routing, Satcom or HF. The lat/long of the last transmission was provided in the listing. That should have been part of the preamble of every satcom message, showing where the beam was pointing, whereas I believe it would not be part of an HF ACARS preamble.

I've been going blind looking for the most accepted raw picture of the stream of ACARS messages. Does anybody have a quick link?

Thanks,
GB

[Safety Concerns]

can we keep this sensible.
You have a confirmed message from the crew that they were in turbulence.
You have released acars messages confirming a serious of faults.
You have an aircraft fitted with pitot probes that have been confirmed to cause problems in certain conditions.
You have weather reports confirming that those conditions were in that very area at that very moment AF447 flew by.
The acars messages confirm air data issues on an aircraft flying with known dodgy probes in an area with known bad weather that night.

What does it take for some people.

[flying brain]

The Sunday Herald
Key figures in global battle against illegal arms trade lost in Air France crash

Claims such as this are common in the period after the passenger list has been released and before any technical evidence emerges.

A week or so after the Lauda Air B767 300ER crash, caused by uncommanded reverser deployment, a passenger involved in anti drugs activities was identified and headlines appeared along the lines of the Sunday herald claims.

The Family was called by the press and asked how they felt that their relative was responsible for the death of 228 people. It was appalling.

Once the final facts emerge, everyone has forgotten the other claims........

[gilot]

satellite aircom coverage map and more

http://www.sita.aero/file/1124/AIRCOM_Coverage_Maps.pdf
for all

[TripleBravo]

Lost in Saigon,

if the expert talking here: Innovation Analysis Group is not talking about the CAB PRESS advisory, then I would refer to him as a real expert. (Had no time to actually watch the video.)

It appears he was not given all the information that is available. If not, where does all the talk of "Cabin Vertical Rate" originate?

Simple: Because this is the interpretation the audience wants to hear. You know, yellow press is telling what touches people, so does PPRuNe. Steep dive? How scary, yet sensational.

In reality, the last message is simply stating that something is wrong with the measurment of cabin pressure. It does not specify what exactly. It will be sent just as well when one of the sensors is wrong. One of the sensors this message is relying at is one of the ADIRUs - which were erroneous, as we know. => Faulty ADIRUs are enough to trigger this advisory.

More in-depth here: http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/37634...ml#post4982977

[Graybeard]

Bloomberg.com has a fresh set of articles on the crash, and updates to prior articles. Their reporting seems credible.

GB

[Junkers388L]

A bomb would be the only way of explaining the lack of even a brief mayday on behalf of the pilots.

Bingaling, this is jumping to a conclusion and irresponsible speculation.

The facts are, to the best of my knowledge:

No mayday call (or other voice communication indicating problems) by AF447 was received by anyone after 2:10Z on June 1st.

This does not necessarily mean no transmission was made. Potential interpretations are (the list below does not claim to be complete):

• Flight crew did not make an emergency transmission: e.g. because they stuck to the Avigate, Navigate, Communicate principle and tried to sort out the problems in controlling the airplane and dealing with system failures they had; flight crew incapacitation might be another reason (ref. Helios accident)
• Flight crew made a transmission, but nobody received it: nobody was within range and tuned to the frequency they used, atmospheric conditions degraded or garbled their transmission
• Flight crew attempted to make a transmission, but was unsuccessful: we essentially do not know what happened to the aircraft after 2:14Z, except that it crashed, so by the time they decided to make the call, systems/components required to achieve a successfull transmission might have been lost, ... (myriads of reasons)

ONLY the CVR (if ever recovered) can give a conclusive answer as to whether the flight crew attempted to make an emergency transmission or not!!!

Edit: As thankfully pointed out by "forget" and "Graybeard", the FDR also records mic keys, i.e. one would be able to see whether the crew made attempts to transmit a message over the radio (and I think even if it was the CPT or F/O).

[CONF iture]

Safety Concerns, fully agree with your post, except for one point :

You have a confirmed message from the crew that they were in turbulence

What is your reference to write that ?

[wes_wall]

Bobrun

The full report is available online, for those who can read French. The description of the warnings they received are very similar to those apparently received by the AF crew, so a parallel can easily be drawn

Would you mind posting a link. Thank you

[Jetstream67]

Facts

The received ACARS messages are clearly facts as the system saw it.
That some or all came via SAT - suggesting power and a 'fairly' steady/level antenna as they were sent some minutes after the start of the incident seems to be a fact. Other /later messages may presumably have been generated but never actually sent if/as this changed.

The lack of HF /VHF messages appears to be a fact

The flightplan, no notified diversion, and passing through the CB at night over water appears to be fact

The challenges of the ITCZ generally are a fact

The known pitot tube issues appear to be facts

The 'difficulty' of flight around the coffin curve with instruments not working is a fact.

We don't KNOW a lot else . .

Wandering off these facts to speculate about bombs and bermuda triangles and various similar (?) incidents may be 'human' but perhaps another thread called "unsupported theories" might be a better place for them ???

Just my new-boy penny-worth :-) . . better duck now !

[Gary Brown]

Air Caraibe 2008

The link someone helpfully posted a while back to the Air Caraibe report is:

http://www.eurocockpit.com/docs/ACA.pdf

It’s an internal Air Caraibes discussion document dated December 2008, and issued by their Flight Safety Manager. It refers to two near-identical incidents in August and September of 2008, each one happening to a different A330-200 in the fleet. It then goes onto describe in detail one of those incidents, the case of F-OFDF operating from Martinique to Paris. Note that it doesn’t say where these incidents occurred, nor give more than bare details of the weather encountered.

It’s clearly a scan of a photocopy of the document (and therefore not an “official release” by anyone), and is in 8 sections. Most of those sections are effectively in English, and they go through in detail the instrumentation displays, alerts and checklists which are all given in “Aviation English”, as are all the diagrams. The sections are (I’m translating here):

1 – Avoidance of the area of turbulence

2 – Application of the procedure “SEVERE TURBULENCE” QRH 5.01

3 – Icing of the probes

4 – Reaction of the flight crew

5 – Analysis of the events and their consequences

6 – “RESETS”

7 – Modification of the “PITOT” probes

8 – Meeting at “AIRBUS”
[my note: this meeting is about conflicts between alerts and checklists, especially relating to “STALL”]


My own sense is that only the very beginning of the document really requires that you read French, so here’s my translation [btw, everything in CAPITALS is in capitalized English in the original]:

Dear Colleagues,

At the end of August and the beginning of September our two Airbus A 330-200s ran into severe icing conditions. The causes and consequences were near-identical. Please find below a detailed account of the flight of F-OFDF between Fort de France and Paris Orly.

Phase 1 - Avoidance of the area of turbulence

At 2211hr “HDG” mode was selected on the “FMA”. At 2212hr, as the “WEATHER DEVIATION PROCEDURES FOR OCEANIC CONTROLLED AIRSPACE” was adopted, the crew climbed from 35000FT to 35300FT. This gain in altitude of 300FT did not produce any improvement in flight conditions. As a result, at 2214hr the crew decided to descend, and again stabilized at 35000FT.

Phase 2 - Application of the procedure “SEVERE TURBULENCE” QRH 5.01

At 2222hr + 9s, as the “SEVERE TURBULENCE” procedure was applied, Mach was reduced to M0.80 and the “A/THR” was disconnected. As a result of the weight of 206T and FL350 the “PF” then adjusted N1 to between 81% and 82%.

Phase 3 – Icing of the probes

From 2222hr + 20s to 2222hr + 36s the “TAT” rose from -14deg Celsius to -5 deg Celsius. This rise in overall temperature is a previously seen symptom when severe icing conditions are encountered. The value of the “TAT” in fact reflects the build-up of ice on the probe.

From 2222hr + 36s to 2223hr + 00s the “TAT” maintained a constant value of -5 deg Celsius. ………….

From here on anyone who understands “Aviation English” should be able to follow the text quite easily.


AGB